SMAK makes rosé and nothing else, on the argument that rosé is as versatile to a winemaker as chicken is to a chef and nearly always treated as a summer novelty instead. Fiona S. Mak grew up in Hong Kong, took a hospitality degree, and worked as a restaurant manager and sommelier in New York City before moving across the country in 2013 to enroll at Walla Walla Community College's enology and viticulture program. She worked the 2014 vintage at Opus One and then ran the lab at Artifex, a custom crush facility handling more than a dozen clients at once — an unusually broad education in styles and techniques. The idea arrived on a trip through French wine country: brainstorming with her sister, she realized her happiest wine memory was drinking rosé on a beach, and wondered what a year-round rosé lifestyle would look like in Washington. She founded SMAK in 2018 at thirty-two, becoming the first Asian woman to own a winery in the state, and releases a different rosé for each season. In 2021 she helped launch the Alliance of Women in Washington Wine.